Homicide was based on the book Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, written by David Simon from his time as a crime reporter at The Baltimore Sun. The book was given to Barry Levinson for a possible feature adaptation; Levinson, in turn, gave it to Tom Fontana to make into a TV series. Simon would go on to create The Wire, a more strictly serialized crime series set in inner-city Baltimore, but he cut his TV writing teeth working under Fontana on Homicide. “I think we’re more schlub-like than most shows and I think there’s something crudely appealing about that,” Simon noted in Written By, back when Homicide was in its second, critically acclaimed season.